Safety is at the Top of This Team Member’s List

By Karen L. Edwards, RCS Editor.

Like every member of the Tremco safety team and the company itself, Tony Kotnik is committed to safety and the OSHA Safety Stand-Down.

There is a strong culture of safety at Tremco and WTI that employees live and breathe every day. It comes up in every conversation I have ever had with a team member from either company. Tony Kotnik, the assistant director of field safety operations at Tremco, shared with me the company’s commitment to participating each year in OSHA’s Stand Down for Safety.

“We have been participating every year since it began in 2014,” explained Tony. “It was challenging for us because May is the last month of our fiscal year and we are typically scrambling to hit goals and wrap things up. As a company, we felt that even though it is our busiest month, we wanted to show that we are firmly in support of the importance of safety.”

He said that this year, the company did the Stand Down in May and then when OSHA pushed it to September, they were committed to doing a second Stand Down. “We firmly believe in the whole rationale for participating in it,” said Tony. “Since we work at height 85-90 percent of the time or more, fall prevention is the topic that we really want to make people aware of and educate them about.”

“We did toolbox talks to cover a broader range of information. If you look at OSHA presentations, they talk about planning, equipping and training. When we send a worker up on the roof, we want to make sure they are safe and properly tying off.”

Tony said that he thinks if buildings were built safer and designed with safety in mind, then people wouldn’t have to be tying off. That is where Tremco comes in to help building owners make their buildings safer by evaluating risks and installing safety equipment to keep everyone safe on the roof.

“As a company, we’ve become well versed in rooftop conditions and as things evolve, we know what has to be done to allow folks to be safe,” Tony said. “We are able to be much more efficient at setting up our safety so we can do our essential work of waterproofing the building. We can also suggest to the customer things they could do that would help other trades that need to go up there.”

Tony has been part of the Tremco/WTI team for a little over 40 years saying, “I’ve been here all my life.” He started for the company working in product development and worked his way through various technical assignments and then gravitated toward safety and compliance.

“Our ability to do stand-downs with our huge remote group of people is because we have this incredible safety team,” explained Tony. “There are seven of us. We are worldwide but mostly focused in North America. It’s a joy to work with a team of such creative and dedicated people.”

When asked about his longevity with the company he said, “It’s really not all that unusual in Tremco for folks to have been around for quite a while. We just had a salesperson retire with 47 years' service.  When a company continuously grows, changes and innovates there are all kinds of different opportunities. Every time I turned around there was a new opportunity.”

When Tony is not at work, he enjoys gardening, landscaping, and being a volunteer youth adviser with his church, where he goes on mission trips that often include building roofs. He also enjoys spending time with his two daughters and grandchildren.

If a safety-focused company with lots of opportunities is what you’re looking for, visit their classifieds on RoofersCoffeeShop® to see open positions.

Weatherproofing Technologies, Inc. is an affiliate of Tremco Incorporated and part of the Tremco Construction Products Group.